Si glyph [https://i.imgur.com/mHhTdaF.png]

Simon closed his eyes. The first time he’d entered the tomb, there had certainly been two stone-wyrms, one either side of the ante-chamber doorway. They were large figures, carved from the rock, all claws and torturously curving, muscular limbs. They definitely weren’t there now.

‘What are you talking about?’ Jonas said. ‘Stone-wyrms? You mean, like those statues outside the Labyrinth?’

‘Yes,’ Simon said. ‘Exactly like those.’

‘So how could they disappear? Someone took them?’

‘They were carved into the rock. No one could remove them without leaving any sign. Though, according to legend, an Earth Master could bring them to life and control them.’

Jonas paled. ‘Do you really mean what I think you mean? That some kind of statue is wandering round out there, and it tore that man to pieces?’

‘I don’t see how it’s possible.’ Simon stroked the smooth wall. ‘Even if it was possible, there’s no Earth Master alive today who could do it.’

‘You’re an Earth Adept. Could you control this thing?’

Simon shrugged. ‘There’s two of them. And, no, I don’t think I could control them, unless they sit still long enough for me to draw a sigil.’

‘Then how do we kill them?’ Riga asked.

‘They’re animated granite.’

Riga glanced up the long stairway. ‘Do you have any useful suggestions whatsoever?’

‘Not get caught.’ Simon adjusted the stylus in his metal fingers. If it really was a stone-wyrm out there, he didn’t think blocking the tunnel would keep it out — but right now, he had no better plan. A wall might at least slow it down.

L glyph [https://i.imgur.com/2vwU4yB.png]

The door of Master Zakary’s office was closed. Lorie smoothed her skirts with sweating hands before she knocked.

‘Enter.’

She went in.

Zakary, sitting behind a large, cluttered desk, smiled in welcome. ‘Ah, my little friend, Lorie. Come on in. Sit down, and don’t look so nervous.’

She sat. The window behind him overlooked the courtyard garden where she’d talked with Phin yesterday, cold and grey now in the winter dusk. Zakary’s office was cosy by contrast, warmly lit by gas-lamps, and full of things: books, in particular, caught her eye, and a red lacquer box from the sothron empire, and a wooden sculpture of a leaping fish, which might be from the Windward Isles.

‘Now, my dear… I shall be glad to have you in the second class. Gavin tells me you’re quite the fast learner.’

‘I had already studied the Prime Grammar, sir.’

‘Well, we shall see. How’s your meditation?’

She twisted her fingers in her skirt. ‘I need practice.’

‘You present an interesting study.’ Zakary steepled his fingers. ‘A girl, of course, and much older than our usual beginning students, and yet with abilities many will never master.’

‘Sir?’

‘I asked you here for a small experiment, if you are willing. We don’t expect students to perform invocations until the third year ordinarily, but you, as I say, are a special case. If I direct you, are you prepared to try?’

‘I suppose so, sir.’

He passed her a sheet of paper, pen, and bottle of ink. ‘You have already summoned a salamander. What glyphs are needed for that?’

She dipped the pen while she thought. ‘Flamen, of course, dalet for control, and pe for summoning.’

‘Just so.’ He smiled. ‘Try writing those as a sigil. Simply draw each glyph in turn, combining them into a single design. It’s something of an art, but with only three glyphs should not prove too difficult.’

Her heart bumped. She dipped the pen again, but she was excited now, not nervous. She was being asked to try real magic — and she ought to be able to do it. After all, she’d already summoned a salamander several times by her own method. If she could do it the proper way too, the Masters surely couldn’t turn her away from the Arcanum.

She drew the glyphs with sure strokes. The combined sigil was a little lumpy, but she thought it good enough for a first try.

Zakary leaned forward to inspect her work. ‘You have a good hand. The next step is simply to concentrate on the sigil.’

‘Concentrate?’

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

‘Let the glyphs and their significance consume your whole mind. Focused awareness is the trick — that is what you learn from meditation. Can you do it?’

She stared at the paper. Focused awareness. Her eyes burned; the sigil seared in her brain — each of the three glyphs separate and yet together, their individual significances, separate and yet together. Her breathing slowed. This was different from her trance-like daydreaming, and yet she felt the underlying similarity, the growing sense of presence and power.

‘Now,’ Zakary spoke softly. ‘The final step is what students struggle with most. You must release the sigil by wiping it from your mind. Forget it altogether, as if you had never seen it.’

That made no sense. The salamander was right there, a beckoning warmth just out of reach. She bit her lip. Forgetting the sigil was wrong. It felt all wrong; she wasn’t sure she could even do it, but if she could, it was still wrong.

She tried anyway — and the salamander’s presence faded, and was gone.

‘Well. Never mind,’ Zakary said. ‘I didn’t really expect you to succeed on a first attempt. Most students practice for years before they summon.’

Lorie clenched her fists in her lap. She had expected to succeed, and she did mind. And she’d been so close — she’d felt the salamander, just as before, and if she hadn’t followed Zakary’s instruction, it would have come to her.

And yet arcane adepts like her father, and Zakary, and all the other Masters, this was how they summoned. How could it be right for all of them but wrong for her? She must have made a mistake.

‘You had better run along,’ Zakary said. ‘Keep working on the focused awareness, hmm?’

‘Yes, sir.’ She picked up her first sigil and crumpled the paper into a tight ball in her hand. ‘I’ll practice hard.’

A glyph [https://i.imgur.com/ZLENX3y.png]

From the shadowed mouth of an alley, Andra waited and watched. All afternoon, men came and went from the tall building. Old men, young men, dark and pale, short and tall — none matched Sam’s description of Chase.

Sam had wandered off up the alley. He ambled back, kicking a battered tin can before him, and stopped at her side. ‘The herbalist said it wasn’t a boarding house, it was a bawdy house, but I don’t know what that is. Do you?’

She shook her head.

‘He laughed a lot. I guess he thought it was funny.’ Sam kicked the can against the wall. It span off into a pile of rubbish. ‘Then he said be careful because they found a dead body down an alleyway near here. Prob’ly not this alley. It was all cut up with bits missing. And that’s not the first one like that. There’s been lots.’

Another man was walking down the street. Fairly young, dark hair, he slouched with his hands in pockets.

‘Some people think there’s a wild lasker in the city. Killing people and eating them. That’s what he said, anyhow. Lasker do eat people, don’t they? But I don’t see why a lasker would be here. They only live, like, really far up north.’

‘Is that Chase?’ She pointed to the man.

Sam stiffened. ‘That’s him! His hair is shorter. It’s him though, I’m sure.’

‘Wait for me here,’ Andra said.

Sam grabbed her arm. ‘Hold on. The house is full of people. You don’t want to charge in there after him. Wait. He won’t be inside long, and then we can follow him when he leaves.’

Andra tensed. Her prey was near and unafraid. She could be on him in a few strides, her knife in his back before he knew it… but what use was that? She needed him alive, not dead, to tell her where her sister was. Perhaps Sam had the right idea. The boy was no hunter and he was often foolish, yet he knew many things she did not. In the time they’d hunted together, she’d gained an odd respect for his opinion. ‘All right. We shall wait.’

Si glyph [https://i.imgur.com/mHhTdaF.png]

After two hours, Holomy had still not emerged from the tomb. Riga stood guard at the top of the stairs, by the wall Simon had made to block the tunnel. Jonas sat in a corner, humming to himself and drawing sigils in his notebook.

Simon paced.

Jonas tore off another sheet of paper to add to his stack. ‘Shouldn’t he be done by now? What do we do if he’s—‘ He twirled his fingers at his head.

‘I’m sure he’s fine.’ Simon grimaced. Holomy ought to be fine. Scrivists were chosen specifically from those with no arcane talent at all, and received extensive training for precisely this kind of work. A scriver could do what Simon couldn’t: accurately copy glyphs while having no conscious or unconscious awareness of their significance. However insidious the glyphs in the tomb, Holomy shouldn’t be in any danger. And if he was, there was precious little they could do to help him.

Jonas nodded absently. Simon sat on the stairs and tried not to watch the Fire Adept working. The very idea of drawing sigils for later use made his skin crawl, but he supposed Jonas knew what he was doing. Combat magic was a specialism of Fire Adepts, and of Phylaxes — the technique wasn’t taught in the Arcanum, and would have been useless to an Earth Adept like Simon anyway.

He examined his steel fingers, thinking. Since he obviously couldn’t draw a sigil on them, modifying them would be tricky, thought not impossible. A similar piece of steel must serve as a conduit. His pen-knife should be a good enough match; he took it from his pocket, along with his stylus.

He scratched the sigil lightly on the steel, and as the summoning built, he pressed the tips of his fingers to the knife blade. A strange feeling this: he had never used magic on himself, and the metal fingers were part of him now. But of course, they weren’t really—just steel, of the nature of steel, not living flesh and blood.

Good steel, obedient steel. He released the summoning, and with the old, familiar thrill, the metal flowed to his will, quicker than rock. It warmed, remembering the heat of the furnace, but it was only a moment and not enough for discomfort.

A sharp point grew from the tip of the steel index finger. Tricky to control something so small. Fine detail wasn’t his forte; he was used to shifting rock by the ton, not the teaspoonful. Still, it was good enough. It would serve.

Holomy appeared in the doorway of the ante-chamber. The scriver looked tired — pale and hollow-eyed — but himself. He raised a book bound in red leather. ‘It’s done.’

‘All of it? And you’re all right?’

Holomy tucked the book into his pack. ‘What do you think, Adept? Would I tell you if my brain had been consumed by an eldritch Power?’

‘He sounds normal enough,’ Jonas said. ‘But now, how do we get out of here?’

‘We’d better talk to Riga.’

They climbed the steps to where Simon had blocked the passage. Riga sat in front of the new wall, her sword across her knees.

‘Holomy’s finished,’ Jonas said. ‘We need to plan how we’re getting out.’

‘Obviously, I must lower the wall,’ Simon said. ‘We should be prepared for the creature. If it’s waiting outside—‘

Riga snorted. ‘We don’t know there is any creature.’

‘Something killed that miner.’

‘A madman with an axe could have killed him. That’s more likely than your stone monsters.’

‘And the eyes I saw?’

She shook her head. ‘Imagination. Bats. I don’t know.’

‘Stone-wyrms, if that is what’s out there, fall within your domain,’ Jonas said. ‘Can you Search for them? Then we’d know if we’re jumping at shadows.’

Simon thought. He was accustomed to Searching for tin ore or rock fractures, yet Jonas was right: he should be able to locate the stone-wyrms. In theory, at least. ‘I’m not sure, but I can try.’